Watts - BX5200 .W3 1813 v.8

ESSAY V. 391 SECT, III.Mr. Locke's Objections answered. FROM what is said in the foregoing pages, the objections of Mr. Locke are easily answered ; I shall set the chief of them in order here from book H. chap. I. I. Mr. Locke supposes, sect. 11, 12, that it the soul thinks while the body is sleeping, then it has itsown concerns, pleasures, pains, apart from the body, and Socrates asleep and awake, are two distinct persons. To this I answer, 1. That it is still the same person, for both the soul and body of Socrates are employed in these ideas, and that whether sleeping or waking. The ideas of his dreams and of his waking thoughts, though they both exist in the mind, yet bothof themmay be occasioned by the motions of his blood and spirits, and they are the acts or effects of the soul and body united, i. e. of both the constituent parts of Socrates. Or, 2. If it were not so, and if the soul alone were employ- ed in sleep, yet Mr. Locke's objection might be answered, by spewing that the actions of life, which belong only to the body as their proper principle, or only to the soul, are generally attri- buted to the whole man ; it is the soul of Socrates that philoso- phized, and his body wore a gown, and yet we say it is the same person, it is Socrates did them both So that there is no manner of reason to suppose Socrates asleep to be a distinct person from Socrates when he is awake, though the soul alone were engaged in thinking while he was asleep, without any operations of the brain. II. Mr. Locke, fi, 13, 14, 18, 19, supposes no-body can be convinced that they have been thinking for tour hours together, and not know it, &c. But, it plainly appears by the foregoing pages, that we may know or be conscious of sleeping thoughts at that moment, when they arise, and not retain them the next moment; so that the forgetfulness of our dreams never so soon, is no proof that we did not dream, or had no consciousness of thinking in sleep. III. § 16. Mr. Locke would insinuate, that if the soul thinks while the body is asleep, and inactive, thosethoughts should be more purely the soul's own operatiops, and consequently more rational. But it appears from what has been said, that the sleeping thoughts of a man being the effects of the various and ungo- verned rovings of the animal spirits in the brain, imposing images on the soul, are not snore regular or rational than those of a waking man, but far less; and therefore they are less worth our remembrance; and it is no inconvenience to us, nor dis-

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